Hello friends, I’m writing to you from my beloved home city Mumbai, where I’ve _at long last_ come to rest and enjoy some time with my parents. I hope you’re having a refreshing break as well this year end. It’s once again been three months since I dispatched the previous newsletter. Life has been incredibly productive and satiating on some fronts; below is a snapshot of some notable things I’ve been up to alongside some pictures from my trip to Hong Kong. I’m grateful that I can embrace a calmer digital life on this personal blog of mine by connecting with people directly instead of drowning in the slurp—and now slop—of social media. Click the links you’re curious about—that’s what the Web is for. :) ## Liked reading * Sci-Fi: The Dark Forest > He was won over by their expressions, because he knew that the eyes of ordinary people were the best reflection of the level of civilization in a time and place. * Poetry: Gitanjali > The child who is decked with prince’s robes and who has jeweled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step. In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even to move. > Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life. * The story of how RSS (feeds) beat Microsoft * ChatGPT’s Atlas: The browser that's anti-web * How we lost communication to entertainment * Joel Mokyr, Gita Chadha, Lawrence Krauss, Joseph Vijay * The Zomato ad and India’s hustle since 1947 ## Poetry on Space I celebrated 5 years and 10,000 subscribers of my Moon Monday blog+newsletter with globally published poetry on space. 🌙 #### Seven uni-verses (booklet) By ****Jatan Mehta****. Poetry on all that space evokes. Read for Free → Publishing _Seven uni-verses_ in an independent manner has also helped me lay the foundation for the next phase of my space writing: Merge the worlds of blogs and books. ## Writing * Achievements and shortfalls in global lunar exploration in 2025 * Lunar sample science updates straight from Hong Kong * A giant leap in orbital imagery will unlock advanced Moon missions * Prepping to live on Luna via analogs on Earth * ISRO and India had a mixed year in space in 2025 * A space program can only move as swiftly as its rockets. It’s India’s time to act on that. ## Space, personally * I got to see Moon samples! Roughly 2.8-billion year old lunar sample brought to Earth by China’s Chang’e 6 mission in 2024. Image: CNSA / CAS / HKU * People have been buying print copies of my poetry booklet—despite the ebook being free!—and sending me pictures along with their thoughts and even reviews on Goodreads. ^_^ My personal favorite is people reading my ebook on e-paper devices like the Kindle. * I made some original memes about my poetry booklet: 🤓 I created these not just to promote the booklet’s open access approach but to also have some fun. After all, I write for you, not social media or SEO, so why not be more humanly whimsical sometimes? __Related:____Fun with Moon exploration headlines__ __and the Moon Monday__ __which starts with a meme__ ## Life and Pictures * Bangalore has great communities around human micro-cultures, which make the city’s growing woes bearable, and sometimes worth it. Reading at the beautiful Cubbon Park as part of Cubbon Reads, participating in blogging meets at IndieWeb Club BLR, and attending bookclubs & events at Atta Galatta have become my monthly doses of sanity, serenity, and community. * Poem: Words * You don’t peek at Hong Kong, it peaks at you: * There are natural vistas at the edges of Hong Kong: * The crescent Moon gracing the Hong Kong skyline, making some humans happy in the process. * * * So these were highlights from my very happening last quarter of the year. What have you been up to? Did you read something nice lately? Reach out to me. Share a good read 📜

To all who share a love for the written word.

Moon Monday #255: Capturing the state of the world’s lunar exploration efforts this year.

Indian Space Progress #34: An honest review of the country’s space activities this year

What could’ve been the real headline instead: Lunar mission updates and India’s ultimate Moonshot.

Indian Space Progress #33: A review of the state of ISRO’s orbital launch vehicles reveals a bleak picture of ambitious goals sliding to the right—in stark contrast to the incessant chest thumping about efficiency.

Here is a peak at some lunar samples from China’s Chang’e 5 nearside landing mission as well as the Chang’e 6 farside one! Holding them is an incredible feeling that vividly reminds you of the immense and irreplaceable value of exploring our Moon. 🌙 Roughly two-billion year old lunar sample brought to Earth by Chang’e 5. Image: CNSA / CAS / HKURoughly 2.8-billion year old lunar sample brought to Earth by Chang’e 6. Image: CNSA / CAS / HKUChang’e 5 and 6 samples. Image: CNSA / CAS / HKU Check my coverage of the volcano of new science results presented at the University of Hong Kong last weekend about what we’ve unlocked by studying such Chang’e lunar samples. And, my idea pitch there for India and China to exchange future Chandrayaan 4 lunar polar samples with Chang’e ones has garnered some interest at CAS. Here’s hoping something comes out of it if ISRO and CNSA decide to engage. 🚀 ## Mission updates NASA has conducted 8 of 10 integrated tests in the lead up to preparations to launch the crewed Artemis II Moon mission. Image: NASA * NASA states that it has completed critical communications tests between the SLS rocket, the Orion spacecraft, and between them and the agency’s Deep Space Network ground stations in the lead up to preparations for launching four Artemis II astronauts around the Moon and back next year. * SpaceX’s first Starship v3 booster stage got damaged during early testing on November 21, leading to yet another delay in SpaceX’s slow progress in working towards landing humans on the Moon for NASA. * New datasets are available from NASA’s ultra-sensitive ShadowCam imager aboard South Korea’s first lunar orbiter KPLO. ShadowCam has been capturing unique observations of permanently shadowed regions on the Moon’s poles to help scientists & engineers plan future surface resource prospecting missions. * The lifespans of the upcoming Chang’e 7 orbiter and lander is designed to be at least eight years each! Thanks to Jack Congram for noting that in his coverage. A render of the Chang’e 7 lander and orbiter going around the Moon. Image: CMG * ESA’s critical Ministerial Council meeting held last week to decide the space agency’s budget for the next three years went well as two dozen members (including Canada’s increased investment by 400%) cumulatively committed a record budget of €22.25 billion, a 17% increase over the previous 3-year budget for 2022-2025 when adjusted for inflation. However, the human and robotic exploration component of the budget is receiving only €2.98 billion, about €800 million less than was requested. As such, this will likely affect ESA’s robotic plans for lunar exploration such as Argonaut and Moonlight. In the best case, it will stretch their already delayed timelines further. * In related and unsurprising news, ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher announced that the three ESA astronauts that will fly on future crewed Artemis missions will come from three biggest ESA contributors: Germany, France, and Italy. These three seats from NASA are in return for ESA’s contributions to the Artemis Orion spacecraft’s critical service module and for providing major parts of the upcoming NASA-led Gateway orbital habitat like the Lunar I-Hab, the Lunar Link communications module, and the Lunar View refueling and cargo module. __Many thanks to__ _****The Orbital Index****_ __and__ _****Space Age Publishing****_ __(ft.____ILOA__ __) for sponsoring this week’s Moon Monday! If you too appreciate my efforts to bring you this curated community resource on global lunar exploration for free, and without ads, kindly support my independent writing:__ Support Moon Monday 🌙 ## More Moon * ESA tested use of multiple instruments to map water ice in a mock layered lunar simulant soil setup at the agency’s LUNA facility so as to optimize the detection and mapping approach of future missions going to the Moon’s poles. * NASA is hosting a public challenge with prizes for solutions which will improve optical recognition of lunar craters, a technology employed by lunar landers to navigate with respect to identified terrain, avoid landing on hazardous craters and other such features, and land with precision. * If you too want to change the frustrating misconception about people at large calling our Moon’s farside as its “dark side”, send them this rebuttal article by Ethan Siegel and blame Pink Floyd and the Transformers. Our Moon’s nearside (left) and the not dark farside (right). Image: NASA LRO / Jatan Mehta

A volcano of new results improving our understanding of our cosmic companion.

Plus mission updates and more memes.

It was eight years ago that I wrote a guide on how to correctly and reliably install NASA’s popular HEASoft software on Linux, a software which is extensively used in high energy Astrophysics research. I wrote it because the official guides on NASA HEASoft’s website were failing to let us correctly install the software, particularly in setting all parameters correctly. But I found some way to reliably get it done through trial and error in installing the software from source in different ways. I never ended up pursuing a career in Astrophysics research, and pivoted to space writing instead, but to this day I get emails from students and researchers alike that they find it useful. That has given me more satisfaction than any of my Astrophysics research might have probably. Open knowledge dissemination is at the heart of the Web. Years later I had removed the post, thinking it won’t be reliable for latest Linux releases—and which I hadn’t tested against. Then I started getting emails saying the guide still works, and that they need to refer it for every new install.. And so I restored the guide and continued my passive contribution to Astrophysics research. 😄

Read to the end for a jolly Jovian update!

A special early edition of Moon Monday for International Moon Day, July 20.